Glenn Beck Didn't Invent The Overton Window

It's OK if you don't want to read this because it's polluted with Glenn Beck.

But this is about a novel written entirely for commercial purposes targeting a very specific and huge audience that's been #1 on Amazon and NYTimes and gosh knows where else for weeks and weeks. It's about how and why that sales record was achieved, not about politics.

I have loads of opinions about the persona Glenn Beck shows on TV, positive, negative, neutral, plus professional opinions and a lot more opinions -- all of which are irrelevant to the point of this blog post, but let's get some of them out of the way first.

1. He says things I know to be true about American History
2. He says things I know to be false about American History
3. He says things I know to be irrelevant about American History
4. He says things I know to be uninteresting about current events
5. He says things I know to be highly commercial, very slick pitches
6. He says things I DO NOT KNOW and have to go look up.
7. He says things I forgot but really need to keep in mind.
8. He says things I need to create an opinion about, but don't have one
9. He says things I'd rather not create an opinion about
10. He does NOT say the things I would like to hear him say, and the lack puts his work in the "Failure of Imagination" category I've blogged about here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/failure-of-imagination-part-iii.html

He digs up facts and carefully leaves out facts so the scattering of facts will seem to make sense and then lead people to a particular conclusion.

But if you include all the facts, you would come to a different conclusion.

I have opinions about the conclusions he appears to be leading his audience to but my opinions don't matter one whit.

If I understand the mechanism of what he's doing correctly, he's not leading that audience, he's following it by careful analysis of instant ratings of his shows. His techniques are worthy of careful study by anyone who wants to gather a pro-Romance readership into a coherent force in the commercial world.

Professional writers study like this for a living. Leave your opinions at the door like muddy galoshes and walk into someone else's life.

Glenn Beck's pick-and-choose facts to make a point is the technique used in every textbook I can think of offhand. I use it myself, on this blog, to clarify writing craft issues, and to put some spring in the springboards I build into story-ideas I hope someone will dive into.

Pick-n-choose is a technique which is fun and works fine if everyone is in on the joke, as I pointed out here where I discussed how history is being lost:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/emigrating-to-future.html

Glenn Beck and the organization behind him are really, really GOOD at "working" his audience. I can see that because sometimes on a couple of things I'm part of that audience. I'm just the sort who doesn't like to be "worked" so I wait to get the point, then flip the channel.

But the "Glenn Beck Phenomenon" is something to be studied, carefully.

It's not worth forming a political opinion about the content of Beck's shows. But it's worth studying that content because it reveals a great deal about audiences, not just his audience.

Read my post on targeting a readership, and the posts cited in it.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

Here though we are focusing on finding and engaging an audience.  We are not focusing on "who" Glenn Beck is or wants to be.

Occasionally, I have the TV on when he's on and I comparison shop news broadcasts, surfing from one channel to another to avoid commercials or analyze commercials. Sometimes I watch most of his segments, though, and it is very instructive.

As a writer, I don't see or hear the same things readers and viewers do. I see an entirely different world, a world of mechanisms that produce illusions rather than the illusions themselves.

Beck produces and projects a powerful illusion which I'm certain has nothing at all to do with who he really is.

His technique would work for any subject. He's combined the "reality show" with the "news commentary" shows that have become so popular.

I could fill this blog with an analysis of the acting, directing, writing, and research on his TV show. But why bother? I'm not in the business of shaping your opinions!

I just want you to notice
a) that he's invented a genre
b) that he's popularized it just as we want to popularize SFR and PNR

I would recommend, though, that if you don't understand what that "Glenn Beck" TV show is, take a look at the spiffy, flashy glennbeck.com top page.

Also note they'll sell you, for about $75/year, access to exclusive web broadcasts of Beck's shows via Insider Extreme. His TV show in the late afternoon spot (it's rebroadcast later at night, too) pulls 3 million viewers, his radio show reaches more. It's amazing how many have turned away from TV to radio! Relative to other TV broadcast or cable shows' audience sizes, we're talking a major audience here. Sports pulls more, as do live-disasters, but for a boring lecture complete with blackboards, this audience size is huge. And they read. They buy books at amazon!

Note the masthead on Glennbeck.com --
THE FUSION OF ENTERTAINMENT AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Doesn't that sound like the mixed-genre PNR or SFR that we love so much?

THE FUSION OF SCIENCE AND LOVE
THE FUSION OF SCIENCE AND ROMANCE
THE FUSION OF ROMANCE AND LOVE (not the same thing, but few know that)
THE FUSION OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE
THE FUSION OF HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN
THE FUSION OF NORMAL AND PARANORMAL

Do you begin to see what fascinates me about this Glenn Beck Phenomenon?

We need to do that. So we need to figure out what he did and how. And why it works so well. We need to avoid having our imagination fail just because of the content of a message. We need to focus on how the message is delivered, to whom, and why they eat it up.

Notice the ART behind the graphic displays, the colors, the words, the images, and the html behind that display on glennbeck.com .

It takes tremendous art and technical expertise (I mean extremely expensive expertise) to achieve that trashy look. It's so expensive it looks cheap, which is its whole point. Glitzy. Slick. Ooozing money from every pixel.

You need to look rich to attract riches.

But riches aren't the point. Examine that top page closely, all the way to the bottom margin. The art of that page actually depicts the projected Glenn Beck persona (I don't know this man, or really anything about the real person. I am examining only the created persona, not the real person. Think of him as a character in a book you didn't like. Now figure out why you didn't like it (or why you did).)

Now go to amazon.com and check out Glenn Beck's books.

Glenn Beck Books

Next check out his 2010 novel, THE OVERTON WINDOW on kindle

The Overton Window

Note that The Overton Window by Glenn Beck has over 500 customer reviews (nevermind the fulminating - the number is what counts here)

Here's the link to the Hardcover page which has a "look inside" feature

The Overton Window by Glenn Beck

Check the Acknowledgements page, page VII.

Look at all the people - with names.

Note JACK HENDERSON "for pouring his heart and soul into this project"

I have read this book, every word, cover to cover.

I read it because of the title, and a sound-byte I heard in passing on Beck's TV show -- that he got this "Overton Window" concept from a think tank.

I went to the think-tank's web page:
http://www.mackinac.org/11398

And I googled and found via wikipedia that there is an entire mathematical branch devoted to calculating the behavior of large populations.  Well, I knew that, but not the research of the last few years. 

The Overton Window is an application of those mathematical principles which form the basis of "Madison Avenue" advertising (and all political advertising, especially now the YouTube videos). One of the founders of the Mackinac Center think tank named Overton codified the application to make it useful for politics.

The objective of the application is to MOLD PUBLIC OPINION - and then to MOVE PUBLIC OPINION toward the objective you have chosen.

It doesn't matter what the objective is, this principle and process applies to changing the behavior of large masses of people.

The think tank applies it to politics, as Beck's novel illustrates (but without the mathematical clarity that would allow you to use it yourself). I'm sure you've seen that Overton Window principle being aimed at you from your TV screen - magazine covers, articles, books.

It lends itself to use by those who use the technique I described Beck using - selecting certain facts from the mish-mosh of history in order to illustrate a point. The point may be true, but not the only truth worth considering. Having someone who sees such a point select the facts that describe that point is a convenient way to learn - provided you don't forget that there exist OTHER facts that might muddy the picture.

But this principle of the Overton Window is THE touchstone, gut-level, seat-of-the-pants intuitive knowledge used by all successful publishers and editors. Just read about it on the Mackinaw website. And note how THEY are yelling about Glenn Beck popularizing their technique! It was obscure and known only to scientists before Beck put it on TV and in a novel.

He reached down and selected this ONE technique that supports his overall point - that someone is manipulating you to a plan you didn't know existed.

But now many millions of people know the term OVERTON WINDOW (even if they have no clue what it means) and they didn't know it before.

The book is a best seller even though it's very badly scarred.  It's full of expository lumps, badly designed scenes, and rewrite scars.  I felt as I read it that there was a powerful writer involved who desperately wanted to say something, but had no idea how to SHOW DON'T TELL, and at least two other hands who tried desperately to tame that exposition into an actual plot.  There are flashes of brilliance squashed by exposition.  But there is a hand in it that is strong and experienced at "Intrigue" genre.  That hand plastered over the cracks so well very few readers would know or care that they're there.   The whole book would never make it without Glenn Beck's marketing machine behind it. It's just not good enough. 

This Overton Window technique is the primary tool of political campaign strategists. And that strategy is designed to get you to do what they want you to do, even if (or especially if) it is against your best interests to do that.

If you've heard of Glenn Beck's 8/28 gathering in Washington, you've heard of it because that event was formulated to illustrate The Overton Window technique, though I've never heard Beck say so (but I don't listen to every word).  

That's what happened with STAR TREK - it moved The Overton Window for the imagination of the American (and eventually worldwide) Public.

Understanding how "they" use this "Overton Window" technique to change the behavior of huge numbers of people, to create "movements" out of scattered opinions, clarified a lot for me about what happened when Star Trek hit the airwaves. Star Trek went on the air before color TV was widely distributed, before Cable TV was anything but a curiosity.

It's impossible for me to determine the cause-effect chain between Star Trek and coincident and subsequent events and technological applications, or even the flow of basic research dollars.

But in the Astrological view of the universe, cause-effect does not work along a time-line as it does in the scientific view of the universe.

In Astrology, effect can precede cause. It's called an "orb of influence" - and before the actual transit contact happens, an Event described by that symbolism can materialize as an effect caused by that whatever might happen at the contact.  That concept spooks scientists, but Fantasy writers and readers have no problem with it.

So leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, looking at the timeline of history from 1950 to 2010, you can see the sweeping eruption of creativity subsequent to Star Trek's being greenlighted for production.

20 years after first airing, when those in college when Trek first aired had achieved positions of power in the scientific community, technological innovation exploded. The basics were laid down by college age kids during the first airing of Trek.

We, as a culture, went through an OPENING OF A WINDOW INTO THE FUTURE - a glimpse of what we might do energized creativity and thousands of very intelligent people surged through that window into our future.

Star Trek opened the technological window into our future.

But Star Trek fans opened another window, a window into emotional maturity in Relationships, a window into Romance, Love, and what Gene Roddenberry kept expounding on, "Wisdom" -- he would say, "In the future, WHEN WE ARE WISE,..." we will do this and that differently.

It's now up to the Romance community which has embraced SF and Paranormal formats to pry open that Overton Window, and shove it along the track in the direction of HAPPILY EVER AFTER being a logical, reasonable, normal expectation of life.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Splatterpunk and "DRACULAS"

What does "Horror" have to do with "alien romances"? Not much! However, some Horror straddles other genres, such as speculative fiction, particularly if it involves vampires-as-aliens.

Draculas ("a novel of terror") by Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson doesn't involve aliens --although images from the Sigourney Weaver movies are used as comparisons-- but it does offer an interesting and heroic reinterpretation of Vlad The Impaler's motives.

Is an alternative historical fragment of backstory sufficient to reinvent "Splatterpunk", and confer upon it the same respectability that "Steampunk" and "Cyberpunk" enjoy?

Splatterpunk—a term coined in 1986 by David J. Schow at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island—refers to a movement within horror fiction distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence and "hyperintensive horror with no limits."^[1][2] It is regarded as a revolt against the "traditional, meekly suggestive horror story".^[3]

^{Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatterpunk}

Splatterpunk may also been called "Gross-out" or "Gore" Horror or "Extreme Horror" but not every horror aficionado agrees that the terms are synonymous.

I googled "splatterpunk and Konrath" just to see what I'd find, and found this on The Pontifications of Maurice Broadus:

Maurice asks: What's the difference between splatterpunk and extreme horror (or even gross out), and why is that sort of approach making a comeback?

JA Konrath: If the goal is to cause fear, it's straight horror. If the goal is to make you gag, then it's extreme horror. Or extreme something. It's possible to write a disgusting scene without blood or violence.

The written word is provocative. Always has been. If used properly, it can make people laugh, cry, think, get angry, or get ill.

As a species, we're fascinated by disgusting things. As writers, it's our jobs to make our readers feel something. Put the two together, and some writers are bound to go for the gross out.

 In the front matter of Draculas, JA Konrath warns the gentle reader:

"…And it's going to freak you out.

If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein.

You have been warned…."

  No romance, then. Expect extreme gore. Since Jeff Strand and JA Konrath are involved (Konrath uses his splattery alias, "Jack Kilborn" as a red flag), expect levity also.

I recommend watching this book for two reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with its literary merit. Horror isn't really my cup of tea, (humor, however, is) and I may have been sent an ARC because I joined a particular GoodReads group. Or, it could have been because I reviewed "Afraid".

FWIW, I joined Horror Aficionados to support my online friend Guido Henkel in a discussion of e-book piracy.

Joe Konrath is well known for being tolerant of e-book piracy and copyright infringement.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/steal-this-ebook.html

One of his collaborators, F. Paul Wilson, is rather less tolerant.

http://trueslant.com/fpaulwilson/2010/05/06/word-thieves-ii/

I will be fascinated to see whether and when this book is upped to the pirate sites, and who --if anyone-- writes DMCAs that are posted on Chilling Effects, and who --if anyone-- publicly learns from whom.

The other reason is "Draculas" groundbreaking response to pirates' exhortations that authors should not only write better, faster, cheaper, but should also add plenty of extra content. This ebook does it all. Well, almost all. I didn't see that it was "enhanced" in the sense of containing moving illustrations or sound effects.

Another caveat: I don't know if it is exactly "better" than individual works by Blake Crouch (www.blakecrouch.com),  J A Konrath (www.jakonrath.com),  Jeff Strand (www.jeffstrand.com), or by F. Paul Wilson  (www.repairmanjack.com), but from the timeline and transcripts in the back matter, this book does seem to have been written in about four months, and it is selling at the pirate-recommended price of $2.99 on Kindle.

Approximately half the book is bonus material, with free short stories, interviews, transcripts of the emails exchanged between the four co-authors as they plotted and edited the developing book, deleted scenes, and more. It's fascinating stuff, and I predict that it will one day be added to an academic syllabus somewhere.

As I wrote in my requested review, 

"DRACULAS" is worth its weight in gold for the bonus material alone.

FWIW, below is my review, which was solicited, and was written to satisfy a quid pro quo agreement (free read for review written and posted on amazon, goodreads, facebook, blogs).

DRACULAS by J.A. Konrath

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Upping The Ante On Nasty.

In the beginning, Joe wrote these words (among others)
"…And it's going to freak you out.
If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein.
You have been warned…."

I do have a weak stomach, I am prone to nightmares, and I don't enjoy fainting. But I also have a strong contrarian streak, so when Joe Konrath warns me that I'm probably not going to want to look at his collaborative effort with Jeff Stand, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson, curiosity will impel me to look.

But, I started cautiously at the back. Worth the entire $2.99 by themselves are the bonus stories, one of which begins with the awesome line, " The hardest thing about killing a hitchhiker is finding one to pick up."

“DRACULAS“ is worth its weight in gold for the bonus material alone.

Curiosity, killed cats, and other red herrings aside there's another reason to devour every bit of this exceptionally well-written, highly entertaining and disturbing book.  Joe Konrath hangs ten on the crest of the most powerful waves and this book could be the way authors write faster, add extra value and thrive.

Here's how. Four first rate spec fic and occasionally hilarious authors put their heads together to horrific effect. Each chose their own hero/victim/evil-doer from a cast of characters, and each dashed off a parallel novella of approximately 20,000 words, then they sliced and diced and cobbled each author's bits together into the literary equivalent of a Frankenstein's monster. Only, it's Freddy on steroids. It gives a whole new dimension to sucking face, and not a nice one.

The dedication --"For Bram Stoker, with deepest apologies"-- is a perfect foretaste of what to expect from “DRACULAS“. Irreverence. Dark humor that is so wry, it's twisted. Offensive stuff, and indeed there is a scene involving bowels and a clown who likes to make rather different balloon animals…. Lots of "wet work", and they maybe ought to have offered apologies of some depth to Clint Eastwood, too!

The prologue (not that they call it that) contains the mother of all hooks.  Erroneously, I imagined the conversation those 4 bad boys of grim *might* have had, before I looked at Joe's generous back matter, and learned how it really was. Their conversations make entertaining reading!

"Let's dig up a head."
"Let's make it really old…"
"And evil. It must be evil."
"Let's attach something nasty to it. What?"
"A curse."
"Wicked teeth."
"Maybe we make those teeth like… like Sleeping Beauty's spindle."
"Dracula's deadly prick…"
"We need sex…"
"You can't have sex with a severed head…"
"Oh, yes you can!"
"Look, we'll call the person who gets hold of the head More Cock."
"And we'll give him an incurable disease."

The foregoing is my imagination. This conversation did not happen… but the gentle reader should remember that Joe Konrath aka Jack Kilborn once wrote a Christmas story about an amnesiac werewolf who discovered that his midnight snacking habit was abnormal after he noticed buttons and coins in his poop.

These "Draculas" have the compassion of hornets, the dentition of sharks, the voracious appetites of shrews and no respect for garlic whatsoever. If you can contemplate a rabid, blood thirsty Edward Scissorteeth in a maternity or pediatric ward, using a severed artery as a drinking straw, or lashing out among the blind… go for it, but with your eyes open.

Do not pay $2.99 merely to find out what's in “DRACULAS“ (and don't go looking for it on the pirate sites, either). There's more than enough in the free sample chapters to give you an accurate idea what to expect.
Here: http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-Chapters-...

Know before you buy that you're going to be ambushed by some of the grossest, sickest, most disturbed, politically incorrect and indiscriminate bloodlusty slash fest that four insensitive guys can think up.

Disclaimer. This is an author review. 4-stars is as low as I go.  Five Stars!

View all my reviews

 

For those who like promo tips, did you know that you can now cut and embed your GoodReads review wholesale with illustration and links to blogs and websites?

Apparently, you can.

Also good to know is that Amazon now does "teaser" pages before Kindle books go on sale.

Blake Crouch instructed friends:

ON OCTOBER 19, please post your review onto Amazon’s DRACULAS page:

http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-Novel-Terror-ebook/dp/B0042AMD2M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1284569826&sr=8-1.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY THE BOOK TO POST A REVIEW ON AMAZON, you just need an Amazon account. If you want to review the book on Amazon on the 18^th, you’ll have to post it to the DRACULAS teaser page, which is here:

http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-Chapters-Upcoming-Release-ebook/dp/B0042ANZBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1287179930&sr=8-1

Another  promo tactic they are using is to have a special website for the launch:

The DraculasTheBook.com website will also feature all reviews, as well as a forum, which is now open….please stop by and say hello! Blake, Paul, Jeff, and Joe will be visiting frequently.

To our knowledge, this type of marketing experiment has never been attempted on this level. What is the power of a couple hundred reviews all appearing on the same day, and on Amazon? Is it enough take DRACULAS viral? To debut high in the Kindle store? That’s our hope.

  They resisted the temptation to make a "make a splash" pun with their splatterpunk novel of terror. So, I just did. Keep an eye out....

Groan!!!

The Value of Wolves

An intriguing angle on the benefits of restoring wolves to Yellowstone National Park:

Wolves

Here's the article's summary of the fascinatingly complex results of the disappearance of wolves from the region:

"When we exterminated wolves from Yellowstone in the early 1900s, we de-watered the land. That's right; no wolves eventually meant fewer streams, creeks, marshes and springs across Western landscapes like Yellowstone where wolves had once thrived."

The short version of the process explained in detail in the article: Without wolves, elks overpopulated their habitat. They fed on willow and aspen seedlings. Without those trees, beavers declined. In the absence of beavers, the rivers suffered, and so did all the creatures that depended on rivers and wetlands for food and shelter. The entire ecological "web" unraveled without the top predator.

These are the kinds of relationships writers have to consider when building their own worlds. The wolf example also illustrates how risky it is for our species to perform large-scale, forcible alterations of the environment to "improve" it for human use. As that old commercial used to say, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

In S. M. Stirling's wonderful series that began with DIES THE FIRE and just had its latest book published, HIGH KING OF MONTIVAL, the gods get fed up with heavy-handed human misuse of Earth's resources. To put things right, the Powers That Be cause all advanced technology to stop working instantaneously (in the first chapter of DIES THE FIRE) and permanently. The human race has to re-learn how to live with the natural world in a more hands-on way than most of us (Stirling's audience in the industrialized West) have ever experienced. One hint: Suddenly being a devotee of some "crazy" hobby such as the Society for Creative Anachronism becomes a valued survival trait.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Genetic Mechanism By Which Love Conquers All

Looking for an article posted online because I had browsed it in a waiting room in a paper copy of DISCOVER magazine, I got stuck reading this article:

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/15-brain-switches-that-can-turn-mental-illness-on-off

See, that's the problem with being "a reader" -- doesn't much matter what words are stuck in front of one's nose, you'll read them. Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, 3 thousand year old grocery lists, doesn't matter. Everything is fascinating to a writer.

That's one of the ways you know you're a writer. Everything implies something that could make a story.

So I got stuck on this article on mental illness, a subject which bores me stiff, so of course I got all excited about the Romance story potential in it.

------Quote From Discover--------

Each of our brain cells contains the same set of genes we were born with and uses those genes to build proteins and other molecules throughout its life. The sequence of DNA in those genes is pretty much fixed. For experiences to produce long-term changes in how we behave, they must be somehow able to reach into our brains and alter how those genes work.

Neuroscientists are now mapping that mechanism. Our experiences don’t actually rewrite the genes in our brains, it seems, but they can do something almost as powerful. Glued to our DNA are thousands of molecules that shut some genes off and allow other genes to be active. Our experiences can physically rearrange the pattern of those switches and, in the process, change the way our brain cells work.
------END QUOTE-------------

So then I read the beginning of the article which explains how lab experiments with mice show that a baby mouse that got attention from its mother (licking its fur) grows up to be harder to startle and more willing to explore while a baby mouse that didn't get attention grows up to be a scaredy cat.

Receiving affection changes you. 

I haven't found experiments on how giving affection changes you but I bet it does.

The article does describe how certain proteins stuck to or surrounding certain genes control whether that gene expresses in your body, or not.

GENES are not DESTINY.

Genes may set up the dropdown menu from which your life-choices are made, but experiences can "gray out" items on that dropdown menu.

In other words, they are getting close to solving the problem of "Nature vs. Nurture" and the solution they see right now is the one I've always thought the most likely -- it's not either-or, it's both-and.

Nature (your genes, your astrological natal chart, your starting conditions you can't change now) does set up parameters which govern the shape of your life. But nurture - the things that happen to you, that you draw from your environment by dint of being you - can alter the way your Nature expresses itself.

Then I saw this article on a Discover blog taking another "discovery" to task for being ill designed and executed:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/

----QUOTE blog--------

that around ~30% of the outcome of financial decisions are heritable. That is, that ~30% of the variation in financial decisions within the population can be accounted for by variation in genes within the population.

-----END QUOTE-------


The blogger challenges the connection between genes and financial decisions, and I don't buy that connection either.

BUT WHAT IF....?????

It makes a great SFR premise, doesn't it?  Your wealth is genetic? 

-------Quote blog--------
Over time shared home environment, what your parents model and teach you, tends to wear off, and gene-environment correlation increases the correspondences between particular genetic makeups and behaviors (i.e., identical twins resemble each other more at maturity than in their youth). For most behavioral traits heritability increases with age.
-------End Quote---------

The idea that your original nurture effect wears off with the years does not correlate well with the idea that these proteins wrapped around your genes can cause the genes to express or not express, and that can be determined by nurture - and changed later by experience or therapy.

In other words, human personality remains PLASTIC through life.

If that's true, then love counts. Finding your soul-mate can change everything. Finding your connection with the Divine can provide the strength to kick an addiction and change your life.

Back to the Discover article on mental illness.

Look at the last page of the article. "Epigenetic" is the term for the proteins bound around genes that control whether the gene expresses. 

-------Quote Discover---------
Depression, for example, may be in many ways an epigenetic disease. Several groups of scientists have mimicked human depression in mice by pitting the animals against each other. If a mouse loses a series of fights against dominant rivals, its personality shifts. It shies away from contact with other mice and moves around less. When the mice are given access to a machine that lets them administer cocaine to themselves, the defeated mice take more of it.
--------End Discover Quote------

The article then describes work on brains of deceased humans, some who lived out normal lives and some who committed suicide, showing a difference very similar to the differences found in defeated mice. The article ends with work done on mice that were depressed by being defeated. An injection into the brain caused the symptoms of depression to dissipate even in adulthood by changing the epigenetics. 

Now, nobody is going to investigate whether finding love in adulthood can change the brain chemistry of humans enough to vanquish depression or other such illnesses.

Nobody is going to investigate the effects on humans of just plain acceptance by others, or niceness in society.

But what is here does suggest that the great dust-up over bullying in school yards may have substance behind it. Being beaten up by mobs of kids can really change you and your chances of success in the world.

Some other kind of experience may predispose humans to diving into a cycle of poverty, gambling, or being unable to hold a job.

There may be more kinds of "assassination" than simply murdering someone, or "character assassination."

It may be that simple unkind words can destroy a life.

Speaking unkindly about anyone may in fact be an act of aggression that has dire consequences.  Maybe it might have consequences to the speaker.

If that's true, then a kind word may save a life, perhaps your own.

Do any of the writers here see the PNR applications to the novel structure element called CONFLICT?  If you write Urban Fantasy with magical rules, this kind of "magic" can make a great conflict source, thematic source, character quirk, or plot.  And we're not even touching on love potions and the ethics behind that.

Faith Healing is for real?

Can you heal yourself by changing your opinion of yourself?

How do you go about that? Do you need help from outside? Can the help of a clinician really do the trick? Or do you need true love?  Or will you resort to an injection into the brain? 

Is the real barrier to finding true love somehow in your brain chemistry itself? Do you need an injection into the brain in order to be capable of pair-bonding?

The SF possibilities for SFR are endless here.

What about kids decanted from artificial wombs then raised in a creche among mostly other kids?

What about kids raised in total isolation from other kids?

If you've been following the developments in nano fabrication, you can see how close we are to having brain implants that can do things like fix blindness and deafness caused by brain malfunctions. All kinds of nano-implants for various purposes are ridiculously close. Research money is currently pouring into projects to use nano-tech to bring solar-power up to where it's cheaper than say coal-fired power plant power.

The spinoff from that power research could be the brain implants, and other nerve replacements that could cure, say, paralysis.

Between implants and chemistry -- personalities can be engineered so that people grow up to have a "talent" and ability for specific jobs.  Do you want government deciding your career before you are born and tailoring you to it? 

Maybe stupidity can be cured? Maybe we can all be engineers?  Who decides? 

The question is, do we want these things imposed from outside, or are we as a society going to get busy and cure most of it with love?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

"Free" and "Freely Available" does not mean Legally Available

Yesterday, I wrote to the Government to offer my opinions on copyright and on what should be done about pirates.  I'd like to share what I wrote.

What I wrote is likely to be posted on the government website for the purpose in any case, and by the way, the public posting of protests by authors is one of the many ways that book pirates and their sympathizers covertly try to intimidate and silence those who are harmed by piracy.

To:  copyright-noi-2010@ntia.doc.gov

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your focus on copyright protection and innovation on the internet.

I am an author and a rights holder, and my rights have been infringed by corporations, charities shielded by the Chafee Amendment, and by individuals both for profit and for popularity. Advertisers, advertisement aggregators, hosting sites, file sharing sites, auction sites, subscription sites, and individuals have benefited in a small way from the illegal distribution of my work without my permission and in violation of my rights.

Under the DMCA, many sites that facilitate copyright infringement are obliged to remove infringing works, but only if and when they receive a notice from the copyright owner herself. If the author is unaware of infringement, it continues unchecked.

As I see it, there is no real downside to piracy. The worst that can happen is that the pirate benefits (as does PayPal, for instance, from fees on payments made by individuals to "pirates") until the file is removed at the request of the author. Many times, the pirate then simply "re-ups" the file.

Here is one example of where just one of my books is being pirated. This novella costs $2.50 to $3.50 depending where it is purchased legally.
http://astatalk.com/release/9675/1/Rowena_Cherry_-_Mating_Net/

The copyrighted artwork has been "lifted" without my permission from my website, a further infringement.

You will notice that Astatalk provides instant sharing functionality, so that anyone at all with a click of a mouse can "share" the link to my work with all their contacts on Twitter or Facebook or any other site.

Please look at this page.
http://astatalk.com/community/top/p/1/

Here, you may see the "top" members of Astatalk, and how many works they have "shared".  Notice that this pirate site has more than 580,000 registered members. Note that the top member appears to have shared over 34,000 items.

If you look here http://astatalk.com/board/ you can view the wide variety of copyrighted works being "shared".

Astatalk is one of dozens of such sites.

In my opinion, there are many useful and reasonable measures that could be taken by the government to protect rights holders.

1. Part of the problem with piracy is lack of education and information. Many internet users "share" because they do not appreciate that what they are doing is illegal and harmful.

2. Terms should have a legal definition.

"Free" and "freely available" are used to describe in-copyright works that have been uploaded in violation of the rights of the copyright owner, thus misleading the honest public.

"Sharing" is a euphemism that suggests that the act of copyright infringement is socially acceptable, and benign.

"Information" is currently used to refer equally to fact and fiction. Works of fiction are "entertainment" not "information" or essential "knowledge". A distinction ought to be made. While individuals may have an intrinsic right to acquire "knowledge", they may not have an equal right to free "entertainment".

(It should be noted that public libraries provide legal, free access to works of fiction and also reference works.)

Other poorly understood terms with respect to e-books include "Fair Use", "Ownership", "First Sale Rights", "ReSell Rights", "Public Domain", "Library".

3. It is not helpful that the current law forces authors into an adversarial relationship with readers -- if the authors wish to protect their copyrights.

4. Rights owners are silenced by intimidation. If one sends a DMCA, one's private information is liable to be made public. The same standard does not apply to "pirates". Their anonymity is protected. Alleged infringers should not have a greater right to privacy than their victims.

5. If a person abuses equipment and breaks the law (a car, a gun etc) that abuser loses the privilege of driving, gun ownership, and sometimes their freedom, etc.

Use of the internet is not a human right, it is a privilege and a convenience. Chronic abusers of the internet should perhaps lose their "right" to privacy, and possibly be permitted only to use the internet via fee-based mobile devices and computers in public buildings such as libraries.

In the case of a confirmed and proven "pirate" a portion of the fees they pay for "Minutes" (on mobile devices) should be garnished to fund reasonable restitution to the copyright owners or else to fund a copyright enforcement body. The current fines upon conviction ($250,000 per work) are ridiculous and must tend to promote hostility and defiance on principle.


6. Copyright is the only retirement plan some creators have. Creators do not receive 401Ks or employer sponsored pensions, or matching contributions, or health care coverage, etc. Therefore, copyright protections ought to be long-lasting. (As they now are).

If we must agree to shorten copyright to achieve international conformity --so all Berne signatory nations enforce the same standards-- fifty years might be reasonable. Ten years is too few, since many times it takes more than ten years before a work comes to market and generates income for the creator.

If a creator cannot expect to make a fair return on the investment of expertise, time, and labor, creators will either produce work of lesser quality, or will turn to other endeavors. In either case, our culture is impoverished.

If "entertainment" is to be defined by the government as essential to innovation and growth, and if "entertainment" is to flow freely, then the government must compensate the providers of the "entertainment". It would be better NOT to so define "entertainment" and to leave entertainment to the private sector.

As the law currently stands, all vendors of e-book readers that permit limited "sharing" are in technical breach of copyright law. Patently, the law must change.

Owing to e-reader manufacturers' beliefs about what the public wants, authors are obliged to offer up to 10 e-books for the price of one without negotiation. Under some publishing contracts, an author may be permitted to "share" a mere 5 free copies of her own e-book. Any Nook owner may share up to 10 free copies of that same author's e-book. Surely, the owner of the copyright ought to have more rights than the man in the street.


While making copyright logical, fair, clear, comprehensible... it seems to me that the same rules should apply to schools and universities as applies in the real world.

For all their formative years, young people are taught the version of copyright that applies to educational institutions. What we would consider "piracy" is commonplace, and condoned within schools. Then, the young people graduate, and all of a sudden they are expected to understand and obey copyright rules that are very different from everything they've ever been taught or have experienced or have seen authority figures apply.

It's no wonder so many readers are skeptical, incredulous, and outraged by the DMCA.

Finally, as you work to

1. Generate benefits for rights holders of creative works accessible online and make recommendations with respect to those who infringe on those rights;
2. Enable the robust and free flow of information to facilitate innovation and growth of the Internet economy; and
3. Ensure transparency and due process in cooperative efforts to build confidence in the Internet as a means of distributing copyrighted works.

please consider that one of the most frustrating aspects right now is the violation of an author's right to negotiate and benefit from the reproduction and distribution of their work. An author may reserve valuable Audio rights, or E-Book rights from a print publishing contract because she intends to market them elsewhere.

If those rights are not available, they are simply taken (sometimes legally). Moreover, the author is judged upon the poor quality of those illegally obtained and illegally published and distributed results, adding insult to injury.

Sincerely,

Rowena Cherry

"Copyright is a writer's pension plan" (Allan Lynch)
EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

For more discussions of piracy, please visit my personal blog http://www.rowenacherry.blogspot.com

Where I ask, "What would you think, if you saw this in your email?"

Another 54 Complimentary Books. 
Book Mix 20
  
Dear Members
We are sure you will find something of interest in this terrific mix of complimentary books!
Another 54 Free Books for Everyone! (Book Mix 20). When you click the link below, follow the simple instructions on the book page to arrive at the download links page. Easy!

Would you realize that you are about to become a thief? A receiver of stolen goods?

If you are told --twice-- that the books you are about to receive are "COMPLIMENTARY" and once that they are "FREE", you'd expect that the authors and the publishers had given permission for this.

Wrong.

The books have been stolen, pirated, illegally uploaded to a hosting site or pirate site in violation of the authors' copyrights... "shared".

You don't know this. You've no reason to suspect that you are doing anything wrong, so you click the link.

You see "FREE BOOKS FOR EVERYONE".

Sounds good. In fact, the books are only free to everyone who chooses to steal them. And they are not really free. You are about to get your computer loaded up with tracking cookies. Also, you will probably be asked to send $2.00 to PAYPAL (and PayPal will take at least 44 cents as their commission for being part of this sale of links to stolen goods), or you will be asked to click on a link to watch an advert.

Notice the instructions to "Skip Ad" after 5 seconds.

Its easy to collect all the books below for FREE!
Simply click the link below, watch the advert for 5 seconds, then click on the YELLOW BUTTON (Skip Ad) as it appears at the top/right of your screen and you will be directly taken to the main book page!

Scrolling down....

Please note that we are not the 'hosts' of any books, neither did we upload them to any hosting provider. We simply find links to books, that were freely available on the web and share our findings with our members!

Get a clue. This disclaimer is here because these people know that what they are doing is on the shady side of the law. Are they an "Online Service Provider"? If so, the DMCA applies to them, and the safe harbor provisions protect them.

Here's what Chilling Effects http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/ says about safe harbor

In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, a service provider who hosts content must:

• have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, infringing activity on its network
• have a copyright policy and provide proper notification of that policy to its subscribers
• list an agent to deal with copyright complaints

But, are they hosting content? Is a list of links to illegal books "content"? Is a list of links a copyright infringement? You cannot copyright titles.

Ah! Here's the thing. They may not be hosting the books, but they are hosting the COVERS. Cover art is usually copyrighted. A lot of people think it is in the public domain, but they might not be right about that.

There's more... but this post is long enough. If piracy interests you, please check out my rowenacherry.blogspot.com blog, and scroll back a day or two to see what Cheryl K Tardif (Cherish) has to say on the subject.

Best,

Rowena Cherry

Public Domain

Cory Doctorow writes about public domain works in the latest issue of LOCUS:

Proprietary Interest

While I have reservations about some of Doctorow's opinions on copyright, I agree with this essay. Extending copyright protection too far leads to diminishing returns. For lesser-known authors, particularly, keeping works in copyright too long after the author's death doesn't protect the creator so much as doom the work to oblivion. I'm viewing the issue from the perspective of an editor, my first two books having been paperback anthologies (CURSE OF THE UNDEAD and DEMON LOVERS AND STRANGE SEDUCTIONS). In my opinion, the main purpose of reprint anthologies is to preserve in more permanent form worthy pieces of fiction that would otherwise languish in the obscurity of old periodicals or out-of-print story collections. Presently, print copyrights extend to 75 years after the author's death. If the editor can't determine when the author of an older story died, much less track down the current copyright owner, that story can't be reprinted. New readers who might enjoy it can never see it. Fortunately, in almost all cases a work that lapsed into the public domain before the 1978 accord took effect (before that, the maximum length of copyright in the U.S. was 56 years) can't be re-copyrighted, so an editor or publisher is safe in reproducing a story or book dated before about 1920. For materials published after that, they have to start worrying.

One positive effect of the Google digitizing project for "orphaned works": Books that might otherwise never have been seen or heard from again will become available to new readers.

If I'd been writing the law, I would have decreed that the copyright clock starts ticking on publication—a date much easier to determine—rather than depending upon the accidental and contingent factor of the author's death date. Make copyright last a century from publication date, if you must; then the longest-lived author won't outlive his or her own rights in the work.

Doctorow doesn't address this problem specifically but does point out other aspects of the public domain system I hadn't thought of.

The site he mentions, Vintage Ads, is fun to browse:

Vintage Ads

And here's their sister site, which displays hundreds of covers of pulp magazines and comics:

Cover Browser

The fact that copyright doesn't last forever makes possible books such as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, though some readers may consider this not necessarily a Good Thing. More unambiguously positive are books like DRACULA variations and sequels such as Fred Saberhagen's delightful THE DRACULA TAPE and Barbara Hambly's novel about Renfield, or Sherlock Holmes pastiches such as THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION. I wouldn't want to have missed those creations, and as long as copyright stays in effect, such "derivative works" can't be professionally published. As a fiction writer, I heartily support fair recompense to authors and the vigorous banning of piracy, but as a reader (and former editor) I wouldn't want to see those rights extended in perpetuity.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Star Trek: Voyager and Captain Janeway

On facebook, friend me at http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg/

I am in a Group titled Bring Back Kathryn Janeway, and some other Star Trek groups.

The Janeway group has a twitter account and on facebook has over 500 members.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=366418642046

I happened to think of the Janeway Group recently because a fellow found me on facebook who had interviewed me years ago about Spock's popularity.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000108289003

His article is now posted here:

http://mystartrekscrapbook.blogspot.com/2010/04/1976-article-spock-part-2-analysis.html

Click on the image and you can get it up to readable size print.

So as happens constantly, Star Trek is back in front of my nose, and I found myself thinking about Janeway.

If you poll an audience at a con panel about Star Trek: Voyager you get about half hating it and about half liking it or feeling it's "ok" but not the best of the bunch.

If you poll on Janeway as a character, the men reject her and the women like (if not adore) her.

What's going on there?

Star Trek: Voyager had an innate fatal flaw built into the very premise.

The flaw is the same flaw you often find in "SFR" (Science Fiction Romance) or PNR or Fantasy-Romance.

There is a GIANT PREMISE which is absolutely fascinating, energizing, and makes you anticipate watching.

The story starts, and something diverts attention from the premise onto a looming, maybe life-threatening problem, and then onto another problem, and another problem takes priority, and another problem explodes to top priority.

Meanwhile, everyone is waiting and waiting for the PAYOFF - the original primise to be advanced, woven in, and eventually evolve into a conflict that can be resolved.

It's a pattern you see in Time Travel Romance, for example. The author worldbuilds us a nifty time-travel device, accident, premise. One lover-to-be falls or leaps through into another time or universe ---- and never looks back.

We don't find out how the time-travel device works, why it works, how to make it work on purpose and take us where we want to be, or anything interesting. I mean lovers can meet and bond anywhere, anywhen, but there's only ONE Time-Travel-Device that defies physics as I know it. If the device is introduced first, I need to know all about the device, not about the lovers.

If the lovers are introduced first, and the device is a support to that.

For example: one lover is stuck in our time and invents the device on purpose to get to the other lover stuck in some other time - maybe with a plan of fleeing to a 3rd Time - then the way the device works doesn't matter to the story.

But if a device exists, (first before we meet any people), and a person falls through it by accident, then if that person is worth my attention, that person will not rest a moment or think of anything else or feel anything else until they've figured out how the device works and how to command it to take them "home" -- no matter the lure of the current time.

Likewise, with Voyager and Janeway. Here is this SPACE SHIP (wow, a Starfleet ship that isn't THE Enterprise! Bring it on!), and here is this Captain -- (wow, a woman Starship Captain - bring it on!)

Then all of a sudden, they are swept to the back side of nowhere.

They turn around and start trying to figure out how to get home.  And they don't. 

Then this happens, that happens, nothing happens, around and around, and they're on a 70 year trek to home with incidents (incidents mind you, not plot developments) along the way.

They forget about striving to get home through most of the episodes -- where they may be fighting for their lives or for Starfleet principles -- but essentially it's episodic so the Situation is returned to the status quo at the end of each episode. Net-net -- nothing happened.

Well, "nothing happened" is still interesting but only if SOMEONE CARES that nothing happened. Someone has to be frustrated, striving against the barriers preventing something from happening, trying schemes and plots and theories - maybe failing but continually trying. Never for an instant forgetting the goal. 

But that isn't how it goes through most of Star Trek: Voyager.

You have the same plot problem that creates boredom in STAR GATE: UNIVERSE.

In Universe the Ancient relic of a ship is stuck out there and they can't even control it -- OK, they can communicate with home, but still they go from harrowing situation to disaster to this and that and the other thing - and NOTHING HAPPENS with the original premise which was interesting.

In Star Gate: Universe - the premise was there's this Earth outpost that gets attacked and the humans there evacuate onto this relic ship via stargate. Then -- so what? They're stuck as passengers just facing harrowing situations to survive -- not to MAKE PROGRESS mind you, but just to survive.

It's not a story. It's not a plot.

Now they've brought in some vicious aliens who want the relic starship, and they're playing cat and mouse with aliens on their tale, unable to control the ship. Nothing happens.

So you see the recipe for how to kill a series the higher ups in the network hate.

Take a premise guaranteed to sucker in the very audience you want to destroy, ignore that premise because of one emergency after another, and the audience will just wander off to watch White Collar.

If you present a premise first - then work that premise TO THE BEATS - don't bore the audience.

Now, back to Janeway herself.

Frankly, I think what "they" did to this character was the same kind of thing that was done to the show by tossing the premise aside.  They had a dynamite premise -- Kathryn Janeway, woman Starship Captain, Kirk watch out!  And they flipped it off and tossed it aside. 

JANEWAY as a character is exciting because of the potential she has for changing the Trek Universe, the politics and sociology of Star Fleet and interplanetary relationships.

The show's guardian angels recognized that potential, and cobbled onto the mess an ending that might have worked. They brought her back to Starfleet using new technology, time-travel, alternate-universe gimmicks, and she brought back data that changed things.

OK, that's good. So what's wrong with Star Trek: Voyager?

That ending was not INHERENT IN THE OPENING 5 EPISODES.

We were not sitting there anticipating that ending, knowing things the characters did not know, watching them figure it out, seeing their bravery, boldness, audaciousness, and heroism win the day. We didn't see them grow beyond all those heroic traits to bonding with each other despite the barriers to that.  We didn't see Love Conquering All.  We had no idea of what the "All" was that needed "Conquering." 

We couldn't see the overall shape of the VOYAGER story-line from the beginning because the writers didn't know it. The ending was not implicit in the beginning. That doesn't make for a surprise ending or a twist. It makes for a dull show with a deus ex machina ending.

The main character of this story is Janeway.

And that character only contributed to the "confusion" that drove half the audience away.

Yet look at all the Janeway-Chakotay fanfic -- (and other slashes and mashes!).

There's Trek magic in those characters, no doubt about it.

So why does half the audience shrug Janeway off as a non-entity? They don't "hate" her - that would be exciting! They don't even despise her. They think she's a bad Captain and a total wash out as a person.

Why do they think that?

Maybe a better way to phrase it is, "Why don't I think that?"

The answer is Kate Mulgrew.

Mulgrew was handed the short and very dirty end of the stick here.

Janeway was written to be one person in the first episode, another totally different person in #2, and opposite in #3, and skewed in #4, and different again in #5 and so on.

She was never the same person in two successive scripts.

Then as a weekly series must, the producers used different directors on different episodes.

So Janeway was directed to "be" different people - trying to "correct" the writing by directing and acting.

Little by little, Mulgrew created a character --

And that's why I love VOYAGER!

Mulgrew showed us what a real actor can do with an impossible situation.

Keep in mind STAR TREK: VOYAGER is "supposed to be science fiction" -- but as with all the other Treks, the fanfic shows us that it's not. It's really ROMANCE seen from another point of view.

Actually, that's the real difference between or among genres. Any story can be made into any genre by just changing the point of view character and sometimes the "narrative voice" (first person to third person narrative).

Mulgrew took the confused, conflicting, mutually exclusive Janeways she was handed and created a unified, whole, complete HUMAN BEING from the mishmosh.

She created a CHARACTER with depth, facets, inconsistencies that flesh out and illuminate the inner subconscious depths of character the way the very best classics show us character.

The one crippling lack in the material handed to Mulgrew was the lack of RELATIONSHIP. Kirk on-screen displayed relationships, but Janeway wasn't allowed to.

But the fans fixed that. The Fanfic shows us Janeway deep into complex relationships worthy of the complexity of character, the realistic complexity Mulgrew created from the contradictions.

However, Janeway was still a character in a TV show -- an anthology TV show not a really good ARC TV show like Babylon 5.

TV show characters are not allowed to be "classic" - rich, deep, multi-faceted.

Worse, Janeway was still a character in a science fiction TV show, and we all know science fiction is only for teenage boys who are squeamish around girls and basically nerds who will never be able to hold a relationship, right?

So despite the incredible job Mulgrew did, the accomplishment is unsung.

Now, just imagine if STAR TREK: VOYAGER were an actual SFR complete with rich, deep, conflict-ridden RELATIONSHIPS!

Imagine if the writers had actually had a plot for the series, as Babylon 5 had.

In that case, you might be able to see Janeway.

As it is, this gem of a character is encrusted and hidden beneath the rubble of failures of other creative people. All of those who worked on this show are, individually, not only talented but highly skilled and know better than to do this. But for some reason, upper management or whatever, they were not allowed to do what they know how to do -- or not inspired or properly rewarded.

So I say Bring Back Janeway - in another universe than the one we met her in, and let's see what happens with good writing, great directing, and an actual plot, some really Up In Space Romance (as opposed to Down To Earth Romance) and plentiful story-arcs like Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Romanticizing Punks

Glamorizing the common thief, and especially the uncommon thief, is not new. Who remembers Richard Green (real name Richard Greene) as "Robin Hood"?

"Feared by the bad, Loved by the good..." Legend would have us believe that Robin Hood was all about the forced liberation and redistribution of tangible wealth. Today, cyber piracy is about the liberation of, and free distribution of intellectual "wealth".

Are hackers the new "Robin Hood"?

Do hackers and pirates deserve a whole subgenre of romantic fiction devoted to their noble exploits? As Wikipedia states:

Cyberpunk is a Science fiction genre noted for its focus on high tech and low life. The name is a blend of cybernetics and punk and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk", published in 1983.

It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers and megacorporations....

Steampunk appears to be more "respectable", although it is closely related in the pantheon of science fiction subgenres (if "pantheon" is the right word, which it probably isn't). The hero of The Time Machine was a gentleman. Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) might have been piratical, but he was also an officer and a gentleman... at least as portrayed by James Mason, and latterly by Naseeruddin Shah as the fascinating Indian Nemo in the modern Victorian Superhero film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I'm not an expert or even a particular fan of steampunk or cyberpunk, but I am interested in science, history, the future, sociology, psychology, politics, and ethics.

This is beside the point, but I am also very concerned about the way society is going... the pressure upon members of Western society to use cellphones and other wireless mobile devices, and not just to use them occasionally for brief conversations, but to use them continually, and for sustained periods. What if they really do cause cancer, as Northern Europeans have been warning for some years? Where will those cancers form? Brains. Groins. Hands. What else might mobile media devices do to our minds?

As an internet radio talk show host, I have to ask my call-in guests to use landlines. The quality of cellphones may sound fine to the naked ear, but it doesn't re-broadcast well. I'm slightly alarmed that so many people these days don't have access to a landline, even as back-up. What happens if the satellites go down?

One of the modern Robin Hood types (in my personal opinion) that flew across my radar recently suggests that Peer-to-Peer should be monetized on mobile devices. (There's the link.) My reading of his plan --and my reading might be inaccurate-- is that he will decide what all forms of electronic content are worth, and enforce the collection and payment of that "fair" compensation. If content creators sign up with him, he will pay them what he thinks their work is worth, based on sales (I assume. I may be wrong). I infer that if creators do not sign up with him, their work will be reproduced and distributed anyway (and they won't be paid).

It sounds very "Google Book Settlement" to me.

Speaking metaphorically, and in the context of a notional hierarchy within the book industry, I've never thought of myself as an "Aristocrat" (and I still don't. I'm low list and out-of-print as of July 31st.) However, the vainglorious postings by pirates on Richard Curtis's blog about "good pirates" and "bad pirates" and pride in being part of "the revolution" makes me wonder.

http://ereads.com/2010/09/a-bootleg-e-book-bazaar-operates-in-plain-sight.html

This is Fair Use for the purpose of commentary and critique...

“Good pirates love the art, and often the artists, and they also love communication, creativity, social justice, networking, cooperation, fair trade, etc. They take pieces of art and make them available for free, not making any money off of it, gaining only a sense of satisfaction at participating in the revolution.”

So, according to persons who --one might reasonably infer-- think of themselves as "good pirates", there is a Revolution underway.

Presumably, the valiant, lone hackers are battling megacorporations, like their cyberpunk fictional heroes. That explains why the standard arguments to justify piracy focus on unnamed, greedy publishing houses that charge too much, or impersonal copyright organizations known by upper case acronyms, and seldom mention the very small, e-publishing presses, or named mid-list authors.

What is this Revolution? What is the purpose of it? What happens if the Revolution succeeds?

Instead of assembling in the streets, are disaffected unemployed people fomenting unrest and looting via their computers (and I hear that American welfare benefits include free internet access)?

Thinking of all the Revolutions of history, they're supposed to be good for whoever happens to be the underdog, and bad for the establishment. Often, they are also bad for those who might be considered collateral damage.

The British Industrial Revolution, and the Agricultural Revolution resulted in progress, automation, social change, migrations to bigger cities, a different form of exploitation for the producers and workers. The French Revolution might have been splendid fun for the sans culottes…. would one call the guillotining of aristocrats (including children) a form of populism?

Don't most revolutions end up with a different tyrant in charge, but those who were oppressed in the first place remain oppressed? Authors, photographers, artists, models and musicians who might, or might not be, exploited and oppressed by megacorporations will probably end up being exploited by the good pirate kings.

It's been a long time since I studied the rules of what I'm not supposed to write. Once upon a time, it was frowned upon for writers to write about heroes and heroines who are writers, but it seems to me, if one wanted to write a post-cyberpunk underdog story, the heroes and heroines ought to be writers.



Rowena Cherry

Robot Skin

Artificial skin to make it possible for robots to sense pressure may be produced soon:

Artificial Skin

It also shows promise for helping people with prosthetic limbs regain sensation.

Would a robot that can process several kinds of sensory input, including touch, and can pass the Turing test (carrying on a conversation that can't be distinguished from talking to a human being) -- a big step we haven't reached yet -- deserve to be classified as "human"? What would it take for an artificial intelligence to become entitled to "human rights"?

In one of Isaac Asimov's stories, a robot challenges the concept of "human being" in the Three Laws of Robotics. "He" decides that one of his fellow robots, having full sentience and superior intelligence, counts as "human." Therefore he is justified in obeying his robot comrade's orders in preference to those of flesh-type people.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Failure of Imagination Part III: Education

We're going to look at an article that surfaced in July 2010 in Newsweek Magazine, of all places, that unintentionally reveals a lot about the fiction marketplace and how that fiction market is morphing as we begin this new decade.

Who would think Newsweek would give writing lessons?

The overall general topic I've been tackling in these posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is how to improve the general reader/viewer's opinion of the Romance Genre - particularly SFR and PNR.

Part I of this sequence on Failure of Imagination is not labeled Part I because I had no idea the topic would spread so far:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html
Part I is about professional romance writers unable to imagine the HEA is actually a real part of everyday mundane life.

Part II is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html
Part II looks at our failure as a society to imagine solutions to some problems -- and therefore we must suspect we fail to imagine and actualize solutions to other problems. It's not a failure to solve A problem - it's a failure at problem-solving-methodology. I wrote this before the Newsweek article came out.

Part III is this post where we will look at why Americans are wearing such blinders on the Imagination.

We put blinders (those leather cups around the outside of the eyes) on race horses to help them concentrate on running where the jockey points them and not spook at every movement close by, especially when being put into the starting gate stall. They also protect the horse's eyes from flying mud kicked up by a horse next to them.

It's a kindness to the horse, and a way of getting the horse's best out of him/her.

But should humans be treated that way?

When some of our data-input channels (mental and emotional bandwidth?) are blocked by "blinders" do we perform "better?"

Well, if you prevent certain sorts of human behavior before the behavior is even conceptualized, the human might become more tractable, more easily directed into certain group coordinated activities like running in a herd.

How can you put blinders on a MIND???

I don't mean how can you get up the nerve, the gumption, the chutzpah to do that -- but rather how can a mind be "blinded?"

Well, it's psychological of course.

And isn't psychology what fiction is about -- while Romance genre specializes in microscopic examination of the psychological?

You know me and cliches. Here's another old one I haven't harped on before. "As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows The Tree."

People can be bent psychologically if you can get at them early enough in life. The rule of thumb is give me a child until he's 7 years old, and you can do anything you want with him after that. (Is that from the Jesuits?)

We know this from child-abuse studies. A person abused in childhood turns out to be an adult with "issues" -- if overcome, those issues can be a strength, but if not overcome then they can cut swaths out of the individual's total potential.

People are bendable. Thus humans can "adjust" culturally, physically, psychologically, to almost any environment and circumstance.

Humans inhabit this world from the Arctic to the Tropics, on tundra and in deep forest. Humans live packed into cities, and spread onto prairie. Humans live under dictators and alone in single families or tribes. Humans can do anything if they start young enough.

This is what gives us the scope to postulate human-alien Romances, galactic civilizations, lost human colonies on worlds peopled primarily by Aliens (Examples: C. J. Cherryh's fabulous FOREIGNER series and my own Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends. Find free chapters of my novels at http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com )

This bendable trait of human beings gives fiction writers much fodder for character development, story arc, plot and worldbuilding.

There's the story of overcoming childhood trauma -- the story of frigidity being overcome by Love -- the story of a weakness becoming a strength as someone takes their trauma and say, founds an organization to fight that issue in the general public.

Say a kid witnesses their elder sibling being killed by a drunk driver and grows up to found a National Chain of Bar & Grill joints which fight alcoholism and drunk driving, hiring real Psychologists to be bartenders?

There's no such thing as a life-event that is inherently ALL BAD. But there is trauma that changes people in ways they would rather not be changed.

As I've detailed in my series of posts here on Tarot and Astrology, all these life-events are just made of ENERGY - and it's how we bring that energy into manifestation and make choices which put the energy to use that determines whether the energy does more damage than good.

That's the essence of the "Beat Sheet" -- a "beat" is a BANG made by ENERGY - kinetic energy turned into sound. Or in the case of a story: emotional energy turned into action. It all has rhythm. The energy builds, the energy is released in a BEAT.

The rhythms of the world these fiction-beats are derived from are well depicted in Tarot and Astrology (and dozens of other fields of psychology) in a way that writers can use them to create characters, life stories, and plots.

Find the series of posts on Tarot and Astrology listed in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html (this one lists a group of very esoteric essays I did for my professional Review column on Snyder's Beat Sheet - and Snyder agreed).

So people (humans and most of the aliens we write about) can be "bent" as children, and very often, without warning and at great inconvenience to the "benders" they can, as adults, "snap back."

And those snaps can be used by writers as beats for fiction -- beats that mirror the rhythmic drumbeats of real life.

So what has all this to do with Newsweek Magazine?

Well, Newsweek featured a story which came out of scientific research.

The importance of this article is largely in the fact that it is a subject taken up by Newsweek. People will read this who would not read the peer reviewed articles in a Journal.

Read this article on Creativity Quotient if you missed it in your dentist's office:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

----Quote From Newsweek--------
Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
----End Quote From Newsweek------

Go read that article.

Creativity Quotients had been steadily rising, just like IQ, until 1990 when among American children, the CQ scores suddenly bent down, and kept dropping.

For this CQ test, they target 8 year olds, 3rd graders.

Kids who were 8 in 1990 were born in 1982.

See my blog entry on the character of generations as described by the position of Pluto in their Natal Chart, and what that means for writers looking to target an audience.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html
followed by
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

I just got an advertising email for a seminar on screenwriting about how to pitch your screenplay to producers. The pitch for the pitch-course asks, "Do you know how to answer the most common first question producers will ask in a pitch session?" If you can't answer it, you won't even be considered.

Q: What demographic does your screenplay target?

See my series on WHAT EXACTLY IS EDITING -- 7 posts in a row, Tuesdays starting August 3, 2010.

This Producer-pitch question is the editor's and agent's primary question.

Several tweets from Agents on twitter have pinpointed the first sentence of the query letter as crucial, and the information in that sentence has to be WHAT this novel is, meaning the demographic it's aimed at.

That doesn't mean you should write "This Novel is aimed at girls 8-14 years old" -- but it does mean that whatever you say has to IMPLY STRONGLY that you have a direct bead on a specific demographic and what that demographic is.

In fact, the first sentence of your pitch or query letter is an opportunity to show-don't-tell that you have the ability to "show don't tell" as well as that you know the demographic, can hit the demographic, and can specify that demographic.

Marketing is all about demographics, and today everything is so advertising supported that demographics is the be all and end all of saleability.

So in 1982 where was Pluto?

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

Those born in 1995 were 8 years old in 2003.

The Newsweek article points at video gaming and the TV as babysitter (a 1970's 80's phenomenon) as possible culprits in blunting American creativity.

But then it looks at the various attempts to "reform" our education system, and the current "teaching to the National Tests" format.

People born in 1984 are raising kids now. In fact many may have 6 year olds now. That critical first 7 years of bending the twig is in its second generation.

The Newsweek article makes some assumptions that writers working in Contemporary settings need to take into account.

The most glaring to me is the assumption that kids are the product of the school system, and how school is taught determines how the kids turn out.

Well, it's a big part, to be sure.

And perhaps in today's world, the current 20-somethings raising kids with both parents working 40 hour weeks (they should be so lucky these days), perhaps the school and daycare center is in fact the biggest influence on a child's direction of growth.

How many parents teach their kids to stand up to the teachers and show the teachers where the teachers are just plain wrong to teach "what to think" rather than "how to think" -- and just how far would the poor kid get with that? In fact, would it do the teachers any good? Teachers must do exactly what the Principle and Board and so on tell them to, not what they believe is right. Kids don't understand "the system."

How much face-time do you have with your 8 year old (and younger).

Will that sparsity of face-time with their parents make them turn out to have different "issues" than you do when they grow up?

Cruising the web, I saw an article about education advancements. Kids in K-8 grades are using handheld devices to interface with classroom servers. Teaching is high tech because the jobs these kids will eventually need to do will be even higher tech.

Even car mechanics work with "chips" now -- and if they don't do it right, your car stalls or accelerates out of control.

With all of these factors shifting in less than the span of a mere 20 years or so during which a person can go from being a child to being a parent, which way should we bend our children to give them the best chance in the world we can't even imagine?

Because our imagination fails, we don't know how to bend and blinder our children for their success - or even survival.

With the torrential information explosion, overload, blasting at us all from every direction, do our kids need to have "blinders" installed to protect them from the flying mud kicked up by the kid next door inventing something in their garage that will change the world?

Do we need more information, or less, or someone "up there" in authority controlling our information?

Do we need totally free access to anything anyone wants to put up on the Web (including things we'd rather our pre-adolescents not be exposed to?)

Do we need blinders so we don't see those things that would spook us and distract us from our job?

Or would such blinders "bend" our imaginations so that we can't even imagine that we might imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever imagined existed?

What if we imagine a solution to a problem that nobody has ever solved before?

Isn't that the beginning of a Ph.D. thesis?

Those questions each can be morphed into a Theme and used to generate incredible fiction very relevant to today's demographics.

But the writer needs to look at that Newsweek article from another perspective, the demographics of the writer's intended audience.

Pitch a "concept" at a producer who was 8 years old somewhere between 1990 and 2000, and if that "concept" is in the youngster's imagination-blindspot he/she won't be able to see it as a commercially viable concept.

You might have the best idea ever for a High Concept novel-film-TV show, a potential multi-media empire seething through the worldbuilding you've done. If the producer, agent, editor can't "see" it because their imagination has failed - then they won't buy it from you.

And that producer would be correct to pass over your property.

Why?

Because your property would fall into the imagination blindspot of the audience demographic that producer is aiming for. It would mean nothing to that audience, certainly not what it means to you.

So a writer must know what blinders her audience is wearing, blinders the audience is not aware exist. The writer must know the limits of the audience's imagination.

What happened when Star Trek first went on the air - say 1967?

It set off an explosion of imagination among young college students - 20 year olds born in the baby-boomer years.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

Pluto in Leo folks have a magnified emphasis on being leaders, commanders, examples that others follow. Pluto is a magnifier and Leo represents "The King" - the chief. Gene Roddenberry had Sun in Leo.

And Leo rules the natural 5th House, so it's associated with entertainment, and children and siblings, with personal CREATIVITY in general.

Star Trek dropped into the minds of 20-somethings who already had an excess of creativity. That generation, fans and non-fans, produced the Internet, the Web, home computers, satellite, GPS navigation, genetic engineering, even matter-transmission and the discovery of planets around other stars, all in the last 40 years or so.

That didn't happen worldwide. It happened in the USA. But then it started, and is now continuing to happen in other countries where Star Trek has reached. It's slacking off in the USA, and many patents corporations have filed are actually in the names of folks born and raised, even educated elsewhere.

Star Trek may not be the "cause" -- but its popularity, its appeal, is to the imagination. It energizes imagination that already exists. It can't be popular where that imagination fails.

But now the USA is not producing such imaginative people though other countries are.

So the position of Pluto in natal charts and other factors that exist worldwide doesn't account for the change the Newsweek article notes in creativity in the USA as opposed to creativity in other countries.

So where are these blinders on the imagination of USA youth being implanted? In school, by daycare, in sports and other group activities, or in the home, in TV, Internet, and gaming hours?

And what will happen when this generation, or two generations, snap back, rip off the blinders and look at the world again?

Did we implant these blinders on our children to protect them from the excess amount of change the information age has created?

Again, each of these (unimaginable) questions could lead to blockbuster novel sales, films, TV series. Who knows? Can you imagine that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Cover Art

I'm definitely shooting from the hip this morning, so please forgive me. I've had an incredibly exciting flurry of activity, and I'd like to share a glimpse.

It's probably no secret that I am a bit of a copyright hawk. In fact, I'm engaged in a debate with a self-avowed pirate named Jap on Richard Curtis's blog at the moment.... but that's not what I wish to discuss today, and that's not where the URL in the title goes.

I've just contracted to license some new cover art and backgrounds from Mitchel Gray, and if anyone is looking for some terrific images at realistic prices to use on covers (much of the Royalty Free stuff is for non-commercial use) you should at least take a look at Mitchel's work, and follow him on Facebook.

This image is copyrighted by Mitchel Gray.

If you have read my books, who do you think this is? (Or could be?)

My first reaction to this amazing image was that I love the colors and the lighting but the guy does not look like a hero. He looks rather sinister.

Overnight, it came to me. His armpits are shaven. His head should be shaven, too. If I construct a war-hand, and remove his trousers, this could be Viz-Igerd!

He likes sex doggy-style. I think it was the position of this gentleman's hands that caught my imagination, although that gesture is also classically Wizard, and a fighter's come-on.

Call it serendipity, but sometimes, for me, a new story doesn't really fall into place until I have something --someone, I should say-- to look at.

My friend, Mia Marlowe, likes to create a soundtrack of mood music for her heroes. I prefer visuals. To some extent, I do know what music my heroes like... I haven't got that far with His Potency, Viz-Igerd, the Gravenclaw, yet.

Is cover art important to you? It's critical for me. The cover has to show someone or something that is in the book, and it has to be accurate. I'm struggling with new covers for Insufficient Mating Material, and an improved cover for Knight's Fork. It's a busy time!

My next struggle is to decide whether it would be cool to use the same cover hunk (I have to negotiate a contract for each new use) for each book in the series, but with a different background and a different chess piece in his fisted grip.

In the case of Mating Net, the King is an obvious choice, because the protagonist seized a kingdom. Well, an Empire.

My Facebook correspondents, by and large, opine that the Djetth character on the deserted tropical island ought to be holding a knife.
Since he is the victim of a shotgun wedding to a political pawn, he could equally well be squeezing the neck of a bishop, or holding a pawn.

Goddessfish.com is working on something for me right now, as I need to get any cover into the Realms Of Fantasy ad copy and today is the deadline set by the iwofa group.


More anon. Maybe.

The Case Against Adolescence

Some time ago I read a book called THE CASE AGAINST ADOLESCENCE, by Robert Epstein. Glancing through my old newsletters looking for something else, I came across my review of the book and decided to share it with this blog. Here's essentially what I said about this very iconoclastic work:

Epstein, a psychologist, advances the premise that teenagers are *not* typically lazy, incompetent, immature, and impulsive as popular belief has it. He deconstructs the notorious "teen brain" hypothesis widely reported in the media. To my astonishment, the best-known experiment on which that conclusion rests involved only 24 subjects (!) and, as described by Epstein, doesn't even necessarily prove what the reports claimed it proved. (Furthermore, Epstein reminds us that observed changes in brain wiring can be the result rather than the cause of behavioral changes.) Well, inaccuracy and sensationalism in news stories about science don't surprise me, but this author goes far beyond debunking the "immature teenage brain" theory. He maintains that "adolescence" as we know it is a cultural, not a biological, phenomenon, pointing out that it didn't exist as a concept in most of the world's societies throughout history. He quite rightly reminds us that in preindustrial cultures teenagers were considered young men and women, not overgrown children. Rather than rebelling against adults, they were in the process of becoming adults and worked alongside their elders in productive occupations. Even today, many societies don't suffer from the teenage rebellion, angst, and turmoil we think of as normal and inevitable. However, when these cultures become saturated with Western products and ideas, their young people often begin to think and act like American adolescents.

I notice some weaknesses in the way he presents his background information. For instance, it would be easy to get the impression that he thinks the anti-child-labor laws of the late nineteenth century were altogether bad, which he surely isn't saying. On the whole, though, his premises appear sound to me. Epstein attributes our teenagers' problems to their "infantilization" resulting from the "artificial extension of childhood." American teenagers are subject to more restrictions on their freedom than the average incarcerated felon. (I've read somewhere else the idea that our treatment of children, in terms of freedoms and responsibilities, is exactly backwards. We expect too much maturity of little kids, such as making them sleep alone in a dark room from birth and placing them in a highly structured school environment in kindergarten with a curriculum that used to be postponed to first grade or later. Yet we bar our teenagers from meaningful work, criminalize much of their behavior with mindless "zero tolerance" rules, and stifle their free expression in speech, clothing, etc.) So far, my reaction to THE CASE AGAINST ADOLESCENCE is "right on, preach it, brother!"

His proposed solution, however, is more controversial. He would like to see young people of any age (though he hints that, in practice, the decision-making competence he considers the potential of most kids probably doesn't begin much before age thirteen) who can pass standard "competency tests" given adult status in whatever area they've passed the test for. Yes, even drinking, sex, and marriage (as was the case in most cultures throughout history—remember, Juliet wasn't quite fourteen). He proposes a drinking license or cigarette-buying license, similar to a driver's license and revocable if the holder breaks the rules associated with this privilege. The permissible school-leaving age would be lowered, with education spread out over a lifetime and tailored to the individual's needs. In lots of ways, his utopian vision of integrating teenagers into the adult world, with as much responsibility they can prove themselves ready for, appeals to me. But it won't happen, given the vehement opposition even the most modest of his proposals would incite if anyone tried to translate them into practical social policy. The biggest problem with his plan, to me, is that we'd still have the intractable economic realities that underlie the "artificial extension of childhood": Very few people can support themselves independently without those 22 or more years of schooling we've come to accept as the norm. And it's hard to work at a self-supporting job while attending school full-time. Our entire educational system would have to be re-structured. Which is one of Epstein's proposals, but it's even less likely to come to pass than a drinking license for high school students. At age eighteen, I would have wholeheartedly endorsed Epstein's program. (I got married at eighteen, and we're still married; in fact, we had our 44th anniversary earlier this week.) Now, having survived the teen years of our four sons, I have a more ambivalent reaction; I find some of his suggestions more than disturbing. Still, they comprise a serious attempt to tackle a grave social problem. Try to find a copy of this book at your public or college library. It will stir up some uncomfortable thinking.

And for a similar take on the subject of adolescence, read "Why Nerds Are Unpopular." Why DOES intelligence often cause teenagers to be ostracized by their peers? This mind-blowing essay gives a very convincing explanation, which relates to the "infantilizing" practices discussed by Epstein:

Nerds

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt